1. Measuring retention accurately and benchmarking
As the economic climate took its inevitable toll on membership cancellations last year, many operators began to focus more feverishly on retention. This starts with measuring it properly. Purely looking at cancellation numbers and percentages will offer little comfort when trying to establish strategies to prevent them. In 2010 measuring the 'membership life', or more specifically, the 'median length of stay' of your member base will become much more popular. This measure will help operators to determine how they compare with their competition and, more importantly, what action to take to improve performance.

2. Targeting 'high yield' customers
Operators who measure retention using 'length of stay' are ahead of the game as they are able to analyze key member characteristics in their data, to identify which types of members stay the longest. This year there will be an increasing trend towards understanding the 'lifetime value' of the member base, that is, which members stay longest and pay more over the course of their membership life. These are the 'high yield' customers. Knowing which members produce the highest yield will influence marketing and sales trends, leading to operators gaining a much higher return on marketing investment for every member who joins.

3. Inductions
For the last few years many operators have been implementing some form of induction process, but the big trend in 2010 is towards clearly understanding if the process is working and how / what to do to improve it. A member's experience in the early weeks of membership is key in determining whether they are retained in the long term. As sales pressure has increased over the past year, sharp operators have begun to turn their focus to not just creating a 'member journey' but measuring it and managing it effectively.

4. High Risk Customers
In the last year many of the major operators have conducted studies and analysis into 'high risk' customers, i.e. those customers most likely to cancel at a given point in time. This trend and increased investment is set to continue in 2010. It's demonstrative of the simple acknowledgement that when it comes to retention, prevention is far better than cure. Just as operators want to understand our 'high yield' members so they can attract more of them, many of the major players are identifying existing members who are at risk of leaving so that we have time to intervene before they make the decision to leave.

5. The changing role of Staff
Although research has shown for some time that interacting with your members on the floor will encourage them to stay longer, many operators are now going one step further in ensuring that any interventions are 'quality controlled'. This recognition that staff are at the heart of membership retention has seen new methods of staff management being developed, including new tools and processes to assess the impact that staff have on member motivation and ultimately membership life. Incentive schemes are also beginning to be introduced, rewarding staff for their skills and contribution towards improving visit frequency of members and hence retention.